Chryse Planitia

Chryse Planitia, flat lowland region in the northern hemisphere of the planet Mars that was chosen for the landing sites of the U.S. Viking 1 and Mars Pathfinder planetary probes. The Viking 1 lander, which touched down at 22.48° N, 47.97° W, on July 20, 1976, revealed that Chryse Planitia is a rolling, boulder-strewn plain with scattered dusty dunes and outcrops of bedrock. Mars Pathfinder confronted a similar scene when it landed at 19.33° N, 33.22° W, on July 4, 1997.

NASA's Sojourner robotic rover examining a boulder on Mars's Chryse Planitia, as imaged by its parent spacecraft, Pathfinder, after landing on the planet July 4, 1997. Parts of Pathfinder's solar arrays and the rover's down ramp are in the foreground.JPL/NASA

The surface rocks of Chryse Planitia are believed to be eroded remnants of basaltic lavas carried to the site by large floods during Mars’s early history. Analysis of the dusty soil by Viking and Pathfinder lander instruments showed the principal constituent materials (in oxide forms by weight) to be silicon (SiO2; 46 percent), iron (Fe2O3; 18 percent), aluminum (Al2O3; 8 percent), magnesium (MgO; 7 percent), calcium (CaO; 6 percent), sulfur (SO3; 5.4 percent), sodium (Na2O; 2 percent), and potassium (K2O; 0.3 percent). This composition is consistent with igneous rocks formed from magmas that interacted with subsurface ice. The rocks were later affected by weathering and leaching processes that stained their surfaces with reddish iron oxide minerals and concentrated certain sulfates (and possibly carbonates) in the surface soil.

Close-up of a pitted volcanic rock resting on the Chryse Planitia lowland of Mars, photographed by the Mars Pathfinder lander's rover, Sojourner, on September 17, 1997. From the low perspective of Sojourner's camera, the rock appears boulder-sized, but it is only about 35 cm (1 foot) high. Pathfinder landed on the eastern side of Chryse Planitia at the mouth of a large outflow channel, about 850 km (530 miles) southeast of Viking 1's landing site.NASA/JPL/Caltech